


To Love a Family

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Elissa Cousland and Solona Amell [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, King Alistair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 21:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13373034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: Elissa Cousland has learned to be a hard woman. Her home was taken from her and everyone she loved died in a single night, the life she planned and wanted gone forever. Now she's set to marry Fereldan's new king, but she guards her heart from him and she won't give it up easily. Yet Alistair is kind and he wants her to be happy, so he will keep trying. He will give her what peace he can find for her, including a piece of her old life.





	To Love a Family

Elissa was a hard woman, Alistair thought as he gazed at her stoic face as she sat beside him. _A year of running and everything you love being murdered will do that to a person,_ he supposed. Yet it was sort of tragic because in the moments when he could make her forget her past, forget her pain, she would light up like the sun.

“It would be a lie,” Elissa remarked abruptly, “to say that our marriage isn’t somewhat arranged for us.” She turned to him, mahogany hair fluttering over her pale shoulder in the breeze. Her grey eyes reflected his face at him like mirrors, protecting her heart and frustrating him. “Why do you bother with this?”

He looked at her strangely, struggling to understand her. “Is it wrong to hope that you could grow to love me?” he asked her. His own attachment to this enigmatic woman grew stronger every day and though it was too early to call it love it seemed to be heading that direction.

She stared at him steadily, her gaze uncompromising. “I had love,” she reminded him flatly, and he buried his face in his cup of mead so that he didn’t say anything rash. _He knew_ , damn it, but was it so wrong to try?

Alistair sighed heavily as he gazed out at the field just beyond the edge of Denerim, filled with wildflowers blooming in the spring sun and their scent on the breeze. He’d chosen the spot for its sense of peace but it seemed that his betrothed didn’t think much of it. He shifted to cross his legs on the blanket of fine wool that protected them from the damp soil under the sweet grass and considered his answer.

“Love is a fine thing, Elissa,” he finally began, his words slow so that he could make sense of them in the tangle of his thoughts. “I’ve never known it to be exclusive, however. I love my Uncle Teagan and I love my nephew Connor and I even love my horse, but they’re all different.” He turned to her and saw that she was unmoved, kneeling stiffly beside him. It seemed she was determined that they remained cold and distant acquaintances and nothing more, but he wasn’t ready to give up on her. The way she’d smiled at him when he’d gifted her the beautiful golden mare that cropped the grass nearby with his dun-colored mare and the wistful way she sometimes looked at him when she thought he wasn’t looking were enough to give him hope that she might change her tune. It would be dreadful, after all, to be married to a stranger forever, to attempt to father children with a stranger. Even if she never loved him, he hoped they would be friends.

He sighed again and tried something else, something so personal he wasn’t sure he would be able to say it all. “I’ve never told anyone, but I loved a woman once,” he said softly, gazing off into the distance. He checked the positions of the guards that accompanied them and made sure they were out of earshot before he continued. It struck him once more that he would never be allowed to be alone again and he winced. “I never even told her that I loved her. She was… Well, she was beautiful. Bright and vibrant and passionate. She was always the first to laugh and I watched her melt the stony heart of a witch I honestly believed had no heart for a long time.” He paused for a moment, thinking of that bright orange hair always kept so tightly contained and eyes that always seemed to hold a smile and a secret.

“Why didn’t you tell her?” Elissa asked into his silence, and he startled slightly. When he looked at her, she looked away shyly, though he’d never known Elissa to be shy.

He thought about her question for a moment. “I suppose I was sort of hoping that she knew,” he admitted, gazing a tiny white flower near the edge of the blanket and its perfect little petals. “But she didn’t. Or she did and didn’t feel the same. She chose another. And maybe he was better for her than I would have been. He was elven like her, and he laughed like her, and he hid his pain like her. They were good together, anyone could see it. There were nights when they’d keep the whole camp awake laughing and teasing each other.” He laughed a little at a memory of the golden-haired elf chasing the freckled Dalish girl with a wet towel until she hid behind Wynne, who scolded them both. His expression fell when he remembered that it had been a brief moment of levity right before the end. “And then she died, right in front of me, and I lost forever the chance to tell her how much she meant to me. They couldn’t even find her body at the end of it all, but there were so many who couldn’t be identified after that battle.”

“She was the Hero of Ferelden, wasn’t she?” Elissa asked him softly, gently. He couldn’t look at her.

“Yes. Her name was Kahlia, though no one ever seems to remember that. Maybe it’s because she was Dalish, I don’t know.” Her name still rolled from his tongue and lingered in his mouth like it belonged there, even though it never had and it never would.

He allowed himself another moment of sorrow before he shook it off and remembered his purpose in telling this story for the first time. He gave his betrothed a small, sad smile and said, “But she’s gone and she won’t be coming back. So why not move on? Why not try to find a new way to be happy? The past can only hurt me if I grip it with both hands and keep it close.”

Elissa’s stoicism melted into sorrow so profound that Alistair realized that his grief over Kahlia could never match that of the woman beside him. “Iona didn’t want what I could offer her,” she said, so quietly that he struggled to hear. “She didn’t want my wealth or my title or the castle I lived in. She wanted my love and the security I could offer her daughter. I was going to hire her from Lady Landra. We’d drawn up the contract together and I was going to present it the morning after we reunited. I was going to bring her and her daughter to my home and she was going to work for my family for a year. And she didn’t know it, but once that year was up I was going to ask her to marry me. I never told anyone except my brother. He understood and he went to the silver smith on my behalf to order the ring. He told them it was for Oriana, his wife, and not to breathe a word. The ring was never finished because the silver smith was butchered. And Iona died naked in my arms. She never got to say goodbye to her daughter. She barely got to say goodbye to me.”

In the silence that followed Elissa’s words, there was nothing at all but the rustling of the breeze through the grass and the scent of wildflowers and sounds of insects and birds. The sunlight streamed through the clouds in beautiful golden rays but all Alistair saw was the pain and regret in Elissa’s stormy eyes. He wondered if she regretted loving that maid, if she thought that if she hadn’t then she would still be alive. And he could tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that she did everything she could, that it was amazing that she was alive at all. But she’d heard those words before and they didn’t matter. The woman that Elissa had loved, had planned to marry and spend her life with, was dead and nothing he could say would soothe that pain. For long moments, neither of them said anything at all and he stirred honey into her mead for her and they drank it side by side while looking at anything but each other.

Alistair stirred, a sudden thought hitting him hard in the chest. “Where is Iona’s daughter?” he asked Elissa softly. From the corner of his eye he saw her move for the first time since they’d sat down. She shifted off her knees to sit on her hip, leaning towards him unconsciously.

“I don’t know,” she admitted sorrowfully. “Probably back in the alienage.”

“You knew her well, this child?” he asked.

Elissa slanted a look his way, but he kept his eyes on the pattern of the Theirin crest on the blanket. “Yes. I loved her as my own.”

Alistair nodded and smiled a little. “Then you should find her and bring her to the palace,” he told her softly. She jerked as though he’d slapped her.

“As a servant?” she asked cautiously. He looked at her at last and found the clouded mirrors of her eyes had broken. She looked at him with hope, with sorrow, with a plea for better than she’d known before, and he grinned at her.

“As your daughter, of course,” he told her. And her jaw fell slack and for the first time he’d ever seen her eyes filled with tears. She let them spill unheeded down her face and threw herself into his arms. He caught her, their mugs of mead spilling onto the expensive blanket, but he didn’t care. He held her as she sobbed her thanks into his furred collar and he could already hear Eamon’s protests in his head but he would shut them all down to bring his wife-to-be some peace. He would take in that little girl and raise her at Elissa’s side and if anyone made fun of the shape of her ears he’d banish them from his court and from his kingdom, just see if he didn’t. _I protect my family,_ he thought to himself, and felt a fierce sort of joy that he had a family to protect at last.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to introduce you all to my non-Warden queen! I really do love her and I'm glad I finally finished a piece for her. It's a pretty good introduction, too! I hope you like her!


End file.
